Ethan rushed to Kylie's side. He wiped her tears away and said, "I am so sorry!"

Kylie turned suddenly. She pushed his hands away and beat on his chest. "You bastard. I hate you so much! Look what you've done to me. I am a mess. I was so worried about you!"

​​

Ethan just stood there. He let her scream at him, and he let her pound on his chest. He accepted that he owed her penance and that it had only just begun. He deserved this and much more. After hitting his chest for a while, she opened her fists and began slapping him across the face. It wasn't until she had spent all of her energy that she fell into his arms and began to wail.

Ethan held her like that. He wrapped his arms around her and said, "I am sorry. I should never have put you through that, but I will explain everything, and once I have, you will understand. I hope, at that time, you will forgive me. God, I hope I didn't fuck up us!

"I swear it won't happen again," Ethan concluded as he helped her sit back down on her bed. Kylie could barely see through the torrent of tears that clouded her eyes. All she could do was watch Ethan's form as he stood up, turned, walked to the bedside table, took out a small box, and passed it to her.

Kylie took a quick peek at it and frowned. She handed it back to him, and then she looked away. She watched, though, as he opened it and took something out. Already she knew what it was and, when he tried to slide the ring onto her ring finger, she pulled away and, for the first time in days, she yelled at him. "I don't want to be married, you!" she shrieked. "What's wrong with you? Are you retarded? After everything that has happened over the last few days, you're lucky that I haven't scratched your eyeballs out of your head!"

Suddenly, Ethan voice became very serious. "If you don't wear this ring," he said, "I will kill you with my own two hands. If you think I'm not capable of such violence, go ask Ken. I nearly snuffed out his life no more than an hour ago."

Kylie's heart began to beat very fast. She didn't know what had happened between him and Ken, but she could tell that he was serious. Knowing that she didn't know how to respond or what to say. Without warning, she grabbed his hand and bit it very hard!

Ethan looked down at her and, as he gripped her hair, he smiled. Then, as he pulled harder, the smile gradually grew bigger. While he had her in complete submission, she was screaming, and he used his free hand to slip the ring onto his ringer finger. "It stays on," he hissed as he let her go.

"Fine," she cried as she sat up, "but at least tell me where you've been and what you've been doing."

Ethan looked at her and said, "I've been with Dora."

"Then why didn't you respond when we knocked on the door?" Kylie demanded.

Ethan looked up and thought about it. He recognized that he was about to lie, but he didn't understand his motivation. For an instant, his eyes went dark, but then the answer came to him, and he explained, "We weren't at Sunshine Garden. We were at one of her other properties."

Kylie nodded, and she asked him how the movie was.

Ethan looked at her curiously and said, "Why would you think we were at the movies? You know that I don't like going to the cinema…"

Kylie shrugged.

Ethan got up. He rubbed her hair and said, "I am going to go and take a bath. It's still early. If you are still tired, why don't you go back to sleep? I can wake you up in a few hours if you'd like."

Without waiting for an answer, Ethan walked into the bathroom, closed the door behind him, and turned the water on in the bathtub. He looked at himself in the mirror, shaved quickly, undressed, and climbed into the bathtub. He cupped the warm water in his hands and splashed it onto his face, and then he leaned back so that he could relax.

As he closed his eyes, though, Dora's images played on the back of his eyelids in sporadic flashes of color. Dora was putting her hands on his knees. Dora was touching his legs. Dora's tearful face. These images alone were enough to bring him to tears.

He thought about Dora, and he thought about his time in Thailand—he had been forced to dress in feather-made clothes, wear heavy makeup, and stand on the stage to wriggle his body. The women sitting in the audience had pointed at him as if he were some kind of joke, and they'd laughed. Some of them had thrown a hundred dollars on the stage. Some of them would get on stage with him and touch his body. They liked the feel of his prepubescent cock in their hand. At the time, that was his life. He hadn't even known, at the time, that he was being abused. All that he knew was that he didn't like what they were doing to him.

Suddenly, Ethan felt like he was going to vomit. He got up quickly, leaned over the toilet, and threw up.

***

Kylie was just about asleep when she heard Ethan vomiting. She got up quickly and ran into the next room. "Ethan!" she cried anxiously. "What's wrong?"

Ethan sighed as he flushed the toilet and sat back in the bathtub. "I'm okay," he said.

Seeing Ethan naked, she noticed that his knee was scraped. "What happened to your knee?" She wondered. "Did you fall down?"

Kylie squatted to check his leg carefully, but Ethan pulled away from her touch. "Don't worry about it," he said. "Why don't you go and finish your nap?"

"Alright," Kylie replied sadly, "but if you need anything, please don't hesitate to call me."

After Ethan finished his bath, he slipped into a pair of underwear and a tank top and climbed into bed with Kylie. He lay on his back and invited her to lay on his chest. As long as they didn't say anything to each other, he knew that they could get along, and much as he might have wanted to, he knew better than to try and initiate any kind of sexual intercourse.

For the most part, Ethan was disgusted by women, and Kylie was an exception. Why that was, he couldn't fathom. That she loved him, was also a mystery to him. It was true, though, and she'd proven it when she'd come to his rescue. He loved her too, but he didn't know how to treat women or behave towards them. He knew that he should have behaved differently earlier, but he didn't know how he should have behaved.